Fast-pitch softball FAQ

• Slap hit — stance, load, crossover, approach, contact on the run and run-through. There is no planted stride and no rotational finish.
• Windmill pitch — set, load / push-off, top of circle, stride, acceleration, release and follow-through.
• Compact hitting swing, position throw and fielding transfer — the standard diamond phases.

Choose Slap Hit when you slap: that choice gives the clip the slap's own phases and scoring bands — sideways travel through the box is scored loosely rather than read as sway. Only the standard hitting swing traces the bat; a slap, a pitch, a throw and a transfer are read from your body alone.

One limit: the fault checks behind your main issue are the standard-swing ones on every fast-pitch clip. A slap, pitch or throw can therefore be flagged for something the motion does not call for — low hip-shoulder separation on a slap, for example — so weigh those findings against what the motion is meant to do.

Keep the front foot and the chalk line of the box visible through contact, and start recording before the crossover step so the whole approach is in the clip.

If you use the guided recorder, pick its Slap Hitting setup: the framing guide allows for roughly twice the sideways travel of a stationary swing, and the clip reaches Motion Lab already marked as a slap.

Film from the open side and keep the full arm circle in frame from push-off to follow-through — a cropped circle removes the phases the read depends on. The fault checks behind the main issue are the ones written for the hitting swing, so read a finding worded for a swing as a note on how your body was sequenced, not a pitching-specific diagnosis.

Listed as not claimed for fast-pitch: workload diagnosis, measured arm stress and measured pitch speed. It does not count pitches and makes no injury-risk claims. How much a pitcher throws and when they rest belongs with the pitcher, a coach and, where there is pain, a medical professional — see pain or injury and the glossary on workload management.

A long swing matters more here because the reaction window is short: a long path tends to arrive late against a quick or rising pitch. The fix it points to is a shorter, quicker path — hands closer to the shoulder, less loop, hips firing straight into a compact barrel.

The mechanics shared by every bat sport (casting, head drift, early shoulder pull, separation, hip turn and posture) are checked with fast-pitch thresholds, most of them tighter than baseball's. On a standard hitting swing the Contact read can add a rough, clearly labelled estimate of bat-path tilt and bat speed; the ball itself is not tracked.

Fast-pitch has three quick moments worth catching cleanly: contact on a compact swing, contact on the run during a slap, and the release at the hip in the windmill. Any of them can fall between frames at 30 fps.

Slow-motion mode on most phones records at 60 fps or more. Slow-pitch is treated differently — see slow-pitch frame rate.

Hip-shoulder separation at the load is held to the same minimum as baseball. On top of the shared checks, fast-pitch adds a long-swing read, and some of the shared fixes carry a fast-pitch note for the short reaction window: keep the swing compact, quick and on time.

A slap hit is a different motion again, with its own phases — crossover, approach, contact on the run — and its own filming setup; see filming a slap hit.

Use a radar gun or pitching tracker for velocity. What Motion Lab adds is the other half: how your push-off, stride, arm circle and release were sequenced — the mechanics behind the number.

A pitching clip is never turned into a verdict on arm health or readiness to pitch, whatever the velocity.